


Addendum; On Dryad Kisses

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [30]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: M/M, and on Caspian and the way his world sways when he looks at Edmund, on kisses and freckles and the things that raise Narnian kings and queens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 23:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: “This is what raised me”, Lucy says and trails her fingers down her arms, her wrists, her throat, her lips, where her freckles are blooming again, now that she’s back in Narnia, dripping wet and smiling, drenched in her waters and her air, and she grins at Caspian and the blanket he offers her. He sits down next to her and she leans back with a soft hum. “They told you, didn’t they?” The dryad wood under them groans and Caspian looks at her and the way she smiles – content and happy in a way that could make a dryad - a dwarf, a star - get weak knees.“Told me what?” He tilts his head even though she can’t see him and Lucy turns to look at him.





	Addendum; On Dryad Kisses

“This is what raised me”, Lucy says and trails her fingers down her arms, her wrists, her throat, her lips, where her freckles are blooming again, now that she’s back in Narnia, dripping wet and smiling, drenched in her waters and her air, and she grins at Caspian and the blanket he offers her. He sits down next to her and she leans back with a soft hum. “They told you, didn’t they?” The dryad wood under them groans and Caspian looks at her and the way she smiles – content and happy in a way that could make a dryad - a dwarf, a star - get weak knees.

“Told me what?” He tilts his head even though she can’t see him and Lucy turns to look at him.

“About the freckles? I don’t have them, naturally. Ed is the only one of us who does and even he has maybe some light dusting over the bridge of his nose.”

Caspian looks at her and her freckle spotted skin, thinks of Edmund and the way his throat is littered – his wrists, his eyelids, the back of his neck, his forehead - , thinks of Susan and the freckles on her knuckles and her clavicles, of Peter and his ears, his arms, the corners of his mouth. “What about the freckles?”, he asks softly and can’t help but think of the spots on his palms.

Lucy is still looking at him with her eyes the colour of the sea around them, her hair copper against her skin. She points to the back of her right hand where her skin is all but dyed with freckles and hums softly. “This is the first time a dryad kissed me”, she says slowly, and Caspian leans back to look at her and the way her eyes gleam with memories he can’t possibly conceptualise. “It was thawing and they were waking up as we were walking to the camps and suddenly this dryad who’s not even corporeal yet runs up to me, grabs my hand and kisses it, talking to me in a language I didn’t speak yet.” She wets her lips with her tongue and sighs softly. “And the next time I looked at it, I saw these freckles blooming where their mouth touched me.”

The wood under them groans and creaks and Caspian can’t help the way his mouth goes slack, and his eyes flutter all over every single one of Lucy’s freckles. _Dryad kisses._ Each and every one of them; the way they shift and bloom again when they come back – through a train station, a cave, swallowing earth paint turned Narnian sea water. Dryad kisses all over Edmund’s throat, his wrists, his eyelids, the back of his neck, his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, dryad kisses wherever he looks on Lucy’s skin, her lips so drenched in them that he can’t see her skin colour through it all.

Lucy smiles at him. “I thought you knew”, she says softly and suddenly Caspian can’t bear to look at her eyes anymore. He turns his head and stares at the sea instead. It’s the same colour as Lucy’s eyes, just as calm, now. Lucy clicks her tongue. “I mean, your hands and your forehead are full of them so I thought -”

“Full of what?” He still can’t look at her and the way her eyes are the sea, the way her eyes have seen things long gone and long murdered and driven underground. He can’t look at her and her smile without thinking of the way her people’s blood sometimes drips from his hands in his dreams, without thinking of all the knowledge his people have taken and twisted and turned rotten.

“Dryad kisses”, Lucy says and there’s an edge in her voice, as sharp as her daggers. “Caspian, you’re littered in them.”

 _That’s impossible_ , he wants to say, his voice already at the tip of his tongue, _I’ve never met a dryad that would kiss me, didn’t know they were frozen and alive and still here just three years ago._ And yet –

* * *

( _Caspian? Sweetheart, tell me a story, will you?_ Her lips are soft on his hands, her fingers rough and gentle against his skin, the red of her curls mixed with the brown of his own. _Tell me a story, my darling, of whatever it is you’d like to spin tales about._ Her voice is a quiet thing, the sun hangs lazy at the edges of the horizon, its light filtering through the leaves of the red maple tree growing in the courtyard, and if Caspian tilts his head just right, he can see a knothole stretching along her neck.  
_But isn’t that lying? No one told me a story except you and I can’t just make up new ones – can I?_  
A laugh and a kiss on his forehead, the shifting of fabric under him. _Of course you can, my love. This is how stories are born; someone somewhere has to think of them, you see. Someone has to think of writing up that which is true – and that which isn’t. Someone has to think of new tales to tell, and if you’re lucky, they might just be true. So, what is your story about, my dear?_  
_A king, with eyes so soft that you can see all the world’s woods in them.  
Tell me, then, my darling. What happens to this king?_)

* * *

When Caspian first met Edmund and saw the way his eyes were the colour of the woods behind him – on the cusp of summer; light yellow, beige and brown and so many shades of green – he thought the world might have stopped shifting underneath his feet. There was a sword against his throat and warm blood on his skin, and still, he couldn’t stop looking at Edmund and his eyes, his freckles, his silver tongue.

 _A king, with eyes so soft that you can see all the world’s woods in them._ A king in too baggy clothes a thousand years old, his sword as sharp as it must have been the last time he wielded it, his curls still damp, his cheeks dimpled. A king who looks at you, Prince of Telmar, who ran from his uncle and an infant, child that you are, with his head cocked and his eyes like steel. It was all but enough to tie his tongue to the back of his throat.

His tongue was still tied even after he drove a sword through his uncle and the blood on his hands, all the tales and history he’d throttled and twisted to drip poison down the world’s throats. Edmund, like all of them, was wet with blood not his own, his face set into a gleaming smile, his hands firm on the handles of his swords, and still, Caspian couldn’t tear his gaze from his eyes, his lips, his tangled curls. And then Peter had picked all three of his siblings off the ground with a laugh that echoed through the skies, and twirled them about. Lucy’s shrieking laughter and Susan’s soft giggles had mixed with Peter’s deep voice, and Caspian almost felt like he could taste the relief in the air.

And Edmund looked at him, dimpled and loose and content and Caspian fell.

* * *

_Did you know, I wonder_  
_Did you know_  
_How I would sink to my knees for you_  
_How I yearn for_  
_your hands_  
_your eyes_  
_your teeth in your lips_  
_\- or maybe in mine_

 _You see, lately I’ve been thinking_  
_of the woods and their smell_  
_and how all I can think of, standing under a pine tree_  
_is you._  
_And how you might taste_  
_if I could work up the courage_  
_to kiss you._

* * *

_You’re littered in dryad kisses_ , Lucy says, her voice with the sort of edge one uses to handle glass, and Caspian thinks of his wet nurse and all the aches she kissed away, thinks of the tree his uncle ripped out by its roots, and he can’t look at her.

Edmund tastes like hot summer rain storms and fresh herbs prickling on Caspian’s lips. He tastes a bit like copper and a lot like the first thaw of the year. It’s better than Caspian could have imagined, in all his writing, in all his thoughts and all his musings, in all the stories he thought of as a child in a dryad’s lap.


End file.
